BEIRUT — UAE defense conglomerate EDGE Group will establish a loitering munitions and weapons manufacturing entity in Europe in cooperation with Spanish firm Indra, the firms announced.
The company will focus on “the development, production, and lifecycle support of loitering munitions and smart weapons for Spanish and European defence programmes, with scope to expand into additional defence capabilities as requirements evolve,” according to EDGE’s announcement.
“Establishing this joint venture with Indra in Spain marks a decisive step in EDGE’s expansion into Europe,” said EDGE CEO and Managing Director Hamad Al Marar in the statement on Tuesday. “By developing loitering munition capabilities in Spain, we are enabling in-country manufacturing and responding directly to the scale and urgency of European defence requirements, while building long term industrial capability with a trusted partner.”
The new company will be located in the León province in Spain at Indra’s new facility, with the Spanish firm investing between €15 million ($17.5 million) and €20 million ($23 million).
CEO of Indra Group José Vicente de Los Mozos highlighted the importance of this initiative in the firm’s ambition “to become a European reference in the drone industry. The development of capacities enables us to rapidly respond to the needs of the loitering munition market, a segment of strong attractiveness experiencing accelerated growth.”
Commenting on the agreement, Gulf defense analyst and PhD candidate at Milan Catholic University Leonardo Jacopo Maria Mazzucco said that this is another leap by the Emirati firm into European markets.
“For the UAE, the overarching priority is to render its domestic military-industrial complex sustainable, commercially viable, and globally competitive. While domestic procurement absorbs a significant share of production, EDGE’s growth model is explicitly export-driven,” he told Breaking Defense.
Mazzucco added that EDGE has “sought to carve out defensible niches across the global defence market. Alongside unmanned systems and land armoured platforms, loitering munitions have emerged as a core pillar of EDGE’s production and export ambitions.”
And, he noted that EDGE’s team-up with Indra provides a gateway beyond Spain to the broader European and NATO markets including the UK, Germany and Poland.
“Outside Europe, Indra is also a major player in Latin America, a region long identified by EDGE as a priority for expansion, an ambition underscored by the recent wave of agreements between the Emirati defence group and Brazilian defence manufacturers. In this sense, the EDGE-Indra partnership functions not only as a bilateral industrial alliance but as a force multiplier for EDGE’s wider globalisation strategy,” he concluded.
This is not the first time the two countries have worked together. In December 2024, EDGE and Indra established a joint venture dubbed PULSE NOVA to develop and manufacture radars in Abu Dhabi.
The announcement comes just days before the Emirati Unmanned Systems Exhibition, taking place in Abu Dhabi from Jan. 20 to Jan. 22. During the show EDGE will exhibit its array of land, naval and aerial unmanned systems.